By Darian Rodriguez Heyman

More and more nonprofit donations take place in today’s digital landscape, but how can causes ensure their online storefront is not only open for business, but optimized?

As I explored this critical issue in my new book, Nonprofit Fundraising 101, I interviewed Roderick Campbell, the CEO of nonprofit fundraising platform CommitChange. He shared a few takeaways from their efforts to maximize digital donations for Mercy House, a $3.8M nonprofit that has provided housing and support to California’s homeless since 1989.

This simple formula helped Mercy House double online giving in just six months, and I believe it can do the same for your nonprofit, too:

1. Break it Down: CommitChange helped Mercy House break the donation process down into four steps: recurring versus one-time; amount; info; and payment. Instead of asking for the information all at once, they simplified the process, which is especially helpful for digital donors contributing on their mobile device. Another great example of what this looks like is charity: water, also profiled in the book.

Whatever your process, be sure to look closely at recurring giving, as this creates valuable ongoing funding for your cause, increases gifts since people are more likely to donate $10 a month versus $120 now, and simple tweaking here can yield tremendous results: by leading with the recurring gift option, Mercy House increased the number of donors signing up as sustaining members by 400%!

2. Stay Consistent: The data proves what we all know in our guts: nobody likes to feel like they’re leaving your website once they hit that donate button. So be sure to keep the look and feel of your donate page consistent with your website and other communication materials and ensure your logo remains visible throughout the giving experience. This simple change helped Mercy House convert more of the people who clicked “donate” to actual supporters, while simultaneously increasing average gift size.

3. Streamline Donations: Less is more, and once someone clicks “donate,” your job is to make the giving process as simple as possible. In fact, CommitChange discovered that every field eliminated from the donation experience increases conversion by 2%. They further optimized conversion rates by adding some simple programming, so when Mercy House website visitors click the donate button, a new tab opens up exclusively dedicated to the donation process, ensuring a closed environment free of distractions.

By making these three simple changes, Mercy House was able to improve online giving by 110% in just six months, and it didn’t stop there. They continued to enjoy the fruits of their labor and saw an additional 73% increase in the six months after that. The point is, if you take the time to build a solid foundation for the house that is your online giving experience, the sky is the limit to what becomes possible.

Bio

Darian Rodriguez Heyman is an accomplished fundraiser, social entrepreneur, and best-selling author. His work “helping people help” started during his five-year tenure as Executive Director of Craigslist Foundation, after which he edited the best-selling book, Nonprofit Management 101: A Complete and Practical Guide for Leaders and Professionals (Wiley & Sons) and co-founded the global conference series, Social Media for Nonprofits and Sparrow: Mobile for All. His new book, Nonprofit Fundraising 101, is the first truly comprehensive yet practical guide to all aspects of fundraising for your cause, and chapters 15 – 18 are dedicated to online giving. Heyman is also an in-demand fundraising consultant and a frequent keynote speaker at social impact events around the globe.

The post How to Double Online Giving in Six Months appeared first on Socialbrite.

Expanding online fundraising options for change-makers of all shapes and sizes

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, community organizations, social entrepreneurs, change-makers, activists, organizers.

Guest post by Tom Dawkins
Co-founder, StartSomeGood

The last half-decade has given rise to many exciting advances in the area of online giving and community building. The Obama for America campaign was powered by an unprecedented flood of small donations. Kiva made microfinance something we could all participate in, and Global Giving connected us to development projects around the world.

A variety of platforms, including Causes, Razoo and Jolkona, now allow nonprofits to leverage the power of social networks to aid in their fundraising goals. But not all nonprofits, or even most. Without an U.S.-based 501(c)(3) charity registration, an organization cannot use most of these sites. And while a newer group of “crowdfunding” (we prefer the term peerfunding) websites, including Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, allow fundraising by all kinds of groups, charities, nonprofits, for-profits and unincorporated organizations, none of these are focused on social impact projects. In fact, as stated in its guidelines, Kickstarter specifically prohibits “charity or cause fundraising.”

So despite the seemingly diverse fundraising opportunities now available, a huge number of potential social change-makers as well as for-profit social enterprises, pre-tax deductible nonprofit startups and unincorporated community groups (for example the Occupy movement) are not well-serviced by by those offerings. To address this gap and inspire more people to get involved in creating social impact, we launched StartSomeGood eight months ago.

The social impact solution

StartSomeGood provides a platform for all social impact initiatives, whether incorporated as a nonprofit or for profit, or not yet incorporated at all, to grow a community of supporters to help fuel their growth and impact.

We are moving social change fundraising beyond the boundaries of tax-deductible organizations and moving peer-funding beyond the creative projects it is most associated with. By allowing all types of social impact initiatives to promote themselves alongside each other, inspiring and mobilizing their communities to make change happen, we hope to speed up the process of social innovation and cultivate a new generation of change-makers.

How it works

StartSomeGood is not simply a clone of existing crowdfunding sites but a unique model designed to suit the needs of social entrepreneurs. Rather than the “all-or-nothing” model ala Kickstarter or “keep what you raise” model of IndieGoGo, StartSomeGood employs a “tipping point” model that better communicates the context of the project’s fundraising needs. Individual entrepreneurs determine the tipping point for their campaign, anywhere from 25 to 100 percent of the total campaign goal. It is only if the campaign reaches this tipping point that pledges are processed.

The architecture of the site also balances fundraising campaigns with organizational profile pages, providing a more stable fundraising home for growing social enterprises and organizations that want to run multiple campaigns over time. Here’s a comparison we put together of some of the leading peerfunding sites.

Inspiring people to give

We believe that the “nonprofit sector” is less important than the “social good sector” — that great world-changing ideas can come from anywhere and that socially minded for-profits can be as effective at bringing about change as traditional nonprofits. We know that important work is being done by unincorporated groups and social change free-agents. We want to break down the silos that say only a specific type of incorporated institution in one country on earth are given access to sophisticated online fundraising tools. We want to dispel the myth that being tax-deductible is the most important driver of giving behavior because, truth be told, below a certain threshold it simply doesn’t matter.

What are important drivers of giving behavior? Great stories, inspiring visions for a better world, a personal connection to an issue and relationships with people affected or involved are just some of the elements we know inspire people to contribute to a social good initiative. These elements are powerful, irrespective of tax status. More important by far are the ideas, inspiration and credibility of the entrepreneur doing the asking.

This is why we prefer calling what we do peer-funding rather than crowdfunding. “Crowd” implies an anonymous, atomized group of individuals. But this is not who will support your project. Your supporters will be your existing networks and the wider cultural and geographic communities connected to your initiative. We prefer to think of these people as collaborators, or peers, in making change happen.

If you are passionate about an issue facing your community, have a unique vision to share and the commitment to implement it, we would love to hear from you. StartSomeGood might be the toolkit you have been looking for to raise the funds you need and get started.

Related

• What social fundraising means for your nonprofit (Socialbrite)

• Social fundraising tools: Our top 5 picks (Socialbrite)

• Fundly: Tap into your supporters’ social networks (Socialbrite)

• Rally: Raise money for your favorite cause (Socialbrite)

• HelpAttack!: Unleash the charitable power of social media (Socialbrite)

The post StartSomeGood: Grow your social impact appeared first on Socialbrite.

Has Social Media Fundraising Finally Arrived?

A look at the growing phenomenon of social media fundraising

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, fundraising executives, social media managers, donors.

This article is part of our series on social fundraising.

I’ve been looking forward to the promise of “social media+fundraising” for a while now. There are plenty of fundraising solutions that leverage social media, relying on fundraisers to tweet, share, and post their fundraising pages to their social networks. There are also fundraising solutions that fully rely on and live within a social platform, such as a Facebook fundraising application or a fundraising widget you place on your blog. Then there is the newest evolution: fundraising that innately uses social media as a platform.

In the slide presentation above, I review the three categories of social media fundraising and my thoughts about how social media fundraising has finally arrived in a real way.

Sharing is huge

A report from Share This states that sharing generates more than 10% of all internet traffic. In order of frequency, most people click on links shared within Facebook, followed by “other” (blogs, social bookmarking, etc.), email, and Twitter. Facebook is the largest sharing channel, at 38%, which is why so many online fundraising pages are shared and shared again on Facebook.

Social fundraising is growing

By all definitions, online fundraising is growing. Social fundraising is also growing. Network for Good’s online giving study’s quarterly giving index illustrates that, despite the current poor economic outlook, social giving is still rising. In Q1 and Q2 of 2011, social giving increased (though Q1 giving may have been skewed by Japan tsunami relief fundraising). The 2011 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report of US nonprofit social media fundraising reports that Facebook is the social media platform most nonprofits are using if they are participating in social media fundraising, though it is still a very small percentage who have raised significant money using Facebook.

Social sharing of fundraising pages yields results: Social media fundraising that leverages social networks

When fundraisers share their fundraising pages to their social networks, giving increases. Blackbaud recently issued a report and created an infographic about the power of peer-to-peer sharing. Blackbaud found that Twitter and Facebook posts convert 0.25% of impressions into donations. It also found that Twitter users increased donations nearly 10x more than those who did not use Twitter. FirstGiving found that for every share to Facebook, 5 people returned to a fundraising page. FirstGiving also found that the value of a share to Facebook was worth $10.87 in donations.

Peer to peer online donation solutions (such as FirstGiving, Razoo, Crowdrise, Donors Choose) where a fundraiser creates a fundraising page and shares that page are increasingly being used by nonprofit organizations, and the culture of online donations is growing. Sometimes these solutions are also called social media fundraising, because they rely so heavily on social media for amplification. These solutions are ideal for leveraging an organization’s base, and increasing donations through personal social network sharing. However, it’s just as important that the nonprofit also have a vibrant social media presence to amplify these efforts and engage with fundraisers.

Giving that relies on or lives exclusively within a social network

Social media fundraising can also be defined as fundraising that happens within a social network, rather than shared to the network. Most examples of these fundraising solutions live within Facebook. Examples include Causes, the What Gives or FirstGiving fundraising tabs that you can add to a Facebook page or profile, fundraising applications developed for a Facebook Page. These fundraising solutions rely on Facebook to thrive: You have to connect using Facebook, and they count on fundraisers sharing with their Facebook friends for amplification. Other examples include Google Checkout for nonprofits on YouTube or fundraising widgets placed on a blog. This type of fundraising is growing, but certainly is not mainstream, and best used where you have a fair number of supporters and know you can energize them.

Innately using a social platform for donations

Here is the promise of social media fundraising. What if someone could donate just by tweeting, posting an update, Liking a comment on Facebook, giving a LinkedIn recommendation, or writing a blog post? This is the true the convergence of social media and fundraising. A few companies are offering these types of social media fundraising solutions: Help Attack!, Twitpay, and Givey.co.uk.

With Help Attack! (featured later in this series), fundraisers can choose to give by assigning tweets, Facebook posts, using certain key words or hashtags, etc., until they reach their pledge amount. Givey and Twitpay offer similar services, but neither is as developed or offer as many ways to give as Help Attack! A fundraising solution like these are great to use during an online or fundraising campaign to raise awareness, increase donations within a limited amount of time, and energize your base. I suspect that you’ll also need to educate your fundraisers about this brand new way of fundraising merely by tweeting or posting.

I think the future of social media fundraising has just arrived. I can’t wait to see how it matures.

What do you think? Have a favorite fundraising tool? Please share in the comments!

Fundraising series on Socialbrite

• What social fundraising means for your nonprofit

• Social fundraising tools: Our top 5 picks

• Fundly: Tap into your supporters’ social networks

• GoodThreads: Custom T-shirts as a fundraising tool

• HelpAttack!: Unleash the charitable power of social media

• Rally: Raise money for your favorite cause

• Mobile: The next frontier of nonprofit fundraising

• 10 tips for a successful fundraising event

Related

• 24 tools for fundraising with social media (Socialbrite)

• 8 tips for raising funds online (Socialbrite)

• A beginner’s guide to mobile fundraising (Socialbrite)

The post What social fundraising means for your nonprofit appeared first on Socialbrite.

Guest post by Kemper Barkhurst
HiDef

Irecently set up an online donation form for Rio Grande Community Farm, a nonprofit where I serve as board member and volunteer. This PayPal donation form was static and made me wonder about other ways in which nonprofits can raise money with online technologies.

After a little research, I found a few new tricks by which nonprofits can connect and accept donations from their supporters. These methods extend beyond just online payments or joining a social network. Check out the new ways nonprofits can collect donations from a mobile device, a text message campaign (SMS) and even social networks.

Credit card donations with Square

One of those emerging services is Square, a payment system that processes credit cards from a mobile device. This type of system will allow a nonprofit to accept on-the-spot donations. Imagine that your organization is tabling at an event and instead of having to rent a credit card terminal or go through a cumbersome paper-filled process, you grab your smart phone and accept a donation and email the receipt on the spot. There is a low transaction fee associated with each payment and is something that nearly any size, smart phone-equipped nonprofit can get started using fairly quickly once the service is fully launched. The only missing piece would be getting those donors automatically into a mailing list or in a CRM so you can follow up with them of the great work they are supporting (by the way, we can help with that).

SMS donations with mGive

Another way that nonprofits can raise money is through text message donations. A service such as mGive and a well-crafted campaign can open new fundraising opportunities. For a fee, nonprofits can receive text donations in increments of $5 or $10 sent to a designated number. This donation is then charged to the supporter’s cell phone bill, so money can be collected without credit cards or cash payments.

mGive isn’t for all nonprofits, however; service fees range from $400 to $1,500 per month in addition to a fee for each transaction. A free account for contact list building can get a smaller nonprofit started with SMS. This account also allows outgoing messages for a per-message fee. Outside of the free account, it might be difficult to make back the investment without a large media campaign. There are some successes, though, as mGive processed more than $37 million within three weeks after the Haiti earthquake. This is a good testimonial to the power of a well-crafted campaign.

Donations from Twitter & Facebook

Yielding a return on investment into social media networks is very important. Services like TwitPay and Causes allow you to turn these social networks into a direct fundraising mechanism. Nonprofits can now reach the crowds in social networks.

TwitPay and RT2Give

TwitPay, as the name suggests, works with Twitter. Their RT2Give service provides a quick way for getting supporters to donate. So not only do your supporters promote your cause through their tweets, they are just one step away from donating to your cause with a simple confirmation response. Currently a nonprofit must submit a request to access this service. It is recommended that you have at least 1,000 followers or work with a partner that can provide enough exposure.

Causes on Facebook

Causes is an application on Facebook that allows members to support their favorite causes. They can spread their support through their network by joining a cause. They can also quickly get to a donation page where they can show that support. There are currently over 20 million members of this Facebook app. To get started with Causes, a nonprofit can join as a partner or start immediately by adding a cause within the Facebook app. As usual, there is a transaction fee for each payment from your supporters.

Overall, these are all great and dynamic new ways in which a nonprofit can begin more actively connecting and hopefully receiving funding from their supporters. I plan to spend a little time in the next few months experimenting with these services with the farm. It will be interesting to see how a nonprofit can more directly connect with their supporters to keep them engaged.

Kemper Barkhurst is a designer at HiDef, a top-tier team that creates Web solutions for great causes.

Related

• 24 tools for fundraising with social media (Socialbrite)

• 8 tips for raising funds online (Socialbrite)

• How does mobile giving work? (Socialbrite)

• Behind the success of 10 top Causes (Socialbrite)

• 10 mobile apps for social good (Socialbrite)

• Fundraising stories on Socialbrite

The post New ways for nonprofits to raise money online appeared first on Socialbrite.

Guest post by Frank Barry

As the Web becomes more social in nature, people grow to expect more social behavior on your website. Have you thought about how that affects you? Or how it affects the way people give online through your site?

Here are a few things to get you started. Hopefully they’ll give you ideas about how you can make the online giving experience more social for your donors! Once you’ve put some thought into it, I’d love to hear what you’ve decided to do (or please share a link in the comments if you are already doing some of these things).

Follow the rules

There are some well defined guidelines that everyone needs to know, but I’m not going to rehash this because it’s been covered well by the industry leading  Nielsen Norman Group in their study Donation Usability: 58 Design Guidelines for Improving the Donation Process and the Usability of Essential Information on Charity and Non-Profit Websites. You can read more about it on Steve MacLaughlin’s Blog.

For now, here are a few key points you can’t miss when it comes to making the online giving process more social.

• Explain why someone would be interested in donating.
• Use real examples of people you have helped and situations you have improved.
• Provide information about your organization’s presence on social outlets so users can connect with you on them.
• All this info shouldn’t live right on the page where the donation form is. Just make it easily accessible from the donation form.

Simple is always better

You’ll make it complicated for people to share if it’s complicated to give. Keep the goal in mind: You want people to give. Then you want people to pass on the opportunity of giving to their friends and family. Here are five quick tips. (Some thoughts on simplicity by Chris Brogan.)

• Don’t use too many fields or have too many options. You don’t need to collect three different addresses and info on where a person went to school when they give. Less is more.
• Don’t make your form multi-step. Keep it to one page and one step. Too many steps equals too many ways for a person to fall out of the process. Browser issues. Boredom. Distraction. See?
• Don’t use extraneous text/imagery. It’s a fact that giving people too many things to do or look at distracts them from the main goal. Keep it clean and simple.
• Always confirm payment immediately. Doing this makes people feel secure and confident in their decision. Security and confidence make people more inclined to share with others.
• Send an email confirmation quickly. This closes the deal and gives you an opportunity to thank a person for their time and money. A very important step! It’s also a great opportunity to ask the donor to share what they’ve done with their network (remember, their networks matter).

Make it shareable

Think back to the first point: Follow the rules. Explaining why someone would want to give and how you are making a difference makes people want to share with others. It gives them something to share. If people are giving to you it’s likely they’ll want to share that opportunity with their friends and family. Now it’s your job to make it easy for someone to do so.

Here are a few ideas.

• Don’t make people give to share. Check out what Tweetsgiving did. They asked people to tweet what they were grateful for with a link back to www.tweetsgiving.org – this helped to spread awareness.
• Use the AddThis plug-in on the donation form and the onscreen confirmation pages. It’s simple to add and makes it very easy for people to share via numerous social networks and email.
• Provide a way for people to share in the confirmation email. That is, use forward-to-a-friend type functionality and links to your Facebook and Twitter pages.

Go the extra mile

There are a couple things that have been cropping up more and more with social media campaigns and online giving: the idea of showing social proof and creating a friendly competition right your online giving pages.

• Social mentions / social proof – Showing social proof helps potential donors feel safer and builds excitement around the cause. If you see that something is “popular,” you’ll probably be more likely to join in, right? Check out what Epic Change did with Tweetsgiving (see top right area where it says “22,605 Thank You Notes”).
• Friendly competition – For some reason people like competition. It helps foster engagement and community (when friendly of course). Again, check out what Epic Change did with Tweetsgiving: See the “Top Turkeys” section in the lower right.

Discussion: What else have you seen going on? What’s caught your eye? What’s been working for you?

If you don’t want to miss out on the 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media, please sign up.

Cross-posted from JohnHaydon.com.

The post How to make giving on your site more social appeared first on Socialbrite.